ext_34821 (![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
seanchai.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
cap_ironman2008-12-13 07:48 am
seanchai.livejournal.com) wrote in cap_ironman2008-12-13 07:48 am
Entry tags:
When the Lights Go On Again 4/19
Title: When the Lights Go On Again 4/19
Authors:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
seanchai and elspethdixon
Rated: PG-13
Pairings: Steve/Tony, Hank/Jan, Carol/Wanda
Warnings: No much, really. Some swearing and violence.
Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this derivative work. We're paid in love, people.
Summary: Aliens have invaded earth, and the Avengers are scattered. While Steve leads the resistance, Tony once again finds himself playing captive scientist. In the midst of a violent alien regime, separated by seemingly insurmountable boundaries, Steve and Tony have nothing to keep themselves going but each other.
Author's Note:The point in volume three that we're branching off from was originally published around '98-'99, but since Marvel time runs at a slower speed than real world time, early volume three is probably four or so years ago in canon time. Hence 2004 and troops in Iraq. Also, just a heads up; this fic is really, really long. Like, over two hundred pages long. We'll start by posting every other week, though we're hoping to start posting once a week, eventually.
X-posted to Marvel Slash.
Warning: this chapter is un-beta'd. I've read through this for errors, but please feel free to point out any mistakes I may have missed.
When the Lights Go On Again
If you stood still and listened, a distant rushing noise was just barely audible, faint, but continuous. It had taken until the end of the first day before Tony had realized that it was coming from the other side of the walls.
They were underneath the island's water table, below sea level. Which meant there must be pumps somewhere, still running, to keep the vast room full of machinery and computer equipment that the Argonians had confined their human scientists in from filling up with water. If he could find them and disable them, the entire operation would be flooded out.
Of course, if he did that, he and all of the other imprisoned scientists would drown.
There had to be over fifty people down here, most of them people Tony recognized. Dr. Gruenwald, who had been a professor at Empire University's engineering department for as long as Tony could remember. Ivan Reis and Michaela Grell, who had both worked for Oscorp once upon a time, before leaving to seek greener pastures and saner employers elsewhere. Several more people whose faces he didn't recognize, but whose names he had probably seen attached to articles in science and engineering journals.
There were also other, less reputable but more instantly recognizable faces. The Argonians had cast their net wide, and obviously hadn't cared whether the talent they assembled came from university research labs or cellblocks on Rikers Island.
Otto Octavius was stationed less than thirty feet away from Tony, his massive robotic arms hanging limply at his sides. He had been hauled in yesterday, clearly an unwilling participant in the Argonian's plans, and Tony hadn't seen him move more than a step or so from his position behind his lab bench since then -- he wasn't sure if Octavius even could, dragging the weight of those arms behind him.
The Argonians had given Tony a lab bench and an assortment of tools, and handed him a defunct alien missile. They had been coy about exactly what it was, telling him only that they wanted him to "build them a functional replica of this device," but Tony had spent half his life designing and building various kinds of weapons, and he knew a missile when he saw one.
He had tried to stall, telling them that a single example wasn't going to be enough, that he would need to disassemble several "devices" before he could determine the principles they operated on, and the grey-uniformed translator had nodded sympathetically and told Tony that no more could be spared and he would just have to "do his best."
Then he'd patted Tony on the shoulder in much the same way someone might pat a particularly clever pet dog, and left him.
It was an utterly fascinating piece of technology; clearly meant to function by means of nuclear fission or fusion, though they'd taken the nuclear material out, but completely different from any of the American or Russian nuclear weapons Tony had ever seen. He had been poking at it on and off for two days, and still wasn't entirely sure how its guidance system worked. He was still trying to figure out how exactly the detonation process worked; implosion, obviously -- it was too complex to be a simple atomic bomb -- but how many stages, and what kind of radioactive material? What kind of explosive yield was it designed to produce, and what kind of delivery system did it use, and… He had dozens of questions, and he couldn't ask the Argonians any of them without revealing that he'd made much more progress than he was claiming.
Working on the missile had given Tony something to do, something to keep him from dwelling on the fact that he was essentially trapped dozens or maybe even hundreds of feet beneath the earth, under armed alien guard, and had only managed to catch brief glimpses of Clint since getting here.
"Here," in Tony's case, meant an eight-foot square section of cavern between the rock wall and one of the room's massive rotary converters, containing a work area and a fold-out cot for sleeping. There were five of the giant converters, each of them over six feet high, and they were what had told Tony where he was.
Once, all of the power for the New York City subway system had run through these converters. The long banks of modern machines that had supplanted them were under constant, armed Argonian guard at the far end of the room.
Tony's attempts to go exploring had thus far been curtailed by the close watch that was being kept over them.
He was far from alone in his attempts to go exploring; this morning, the Argonians had caught another scientist trying to climb one of the converters, and had pulled him down roughly, with much shouting and lashing of tails.
It was the main reason why Tony hadn't tried it yet; the converters had been in constant operation for most of the 20th century, and there had to be parts in there he could scavenge. He wasn't entirely sure what he would do with them, trapped underground under constant supervision, but he was sure he would think of something.
Well, that, and his ribs still hurt any time he moved. He was in better shape than he had been the last time he'd been held prisoner like this, though. No shrapnel wounds slowly killing him, and no threats of immanent death if he failed to co-operate.
Meanwhile, he had a nuclear missile to pretend he was making no progress on.
Conscious of the grey-uniformed translator's eyes on him -- Tony wasn't sure, but he thought it was the same Argonian who had been present when he'd surrendered -- he re-opened the side panel of the missile and started to very carefully -- and slowly -- remove a piece of circuitry. It wasn't as if he'd never done this before.
He pulled out a single wire, stared at it for a good thirty seconds, and then laid it carefully on the workbench. If he dragged it out long enough, he might be able to use up two or three days just taking the thing apart. Then he could lay its components out on the workbench and the floor and arrange them in random patterns. As far as he could tell, that was what some of the engineers and mechanics who'd formerly worked for Stark Industries had done when they were clueless and incompetent and hoping to pretend they weren't.
Tony turned back to the opened missile and stared at its exposed innards some more, scratching absently at the half-healed cut on his cheek. He'd pulled the bandages off two days ago, when they'd started to itch.
There was movement to Tony's left, and he glanced up, a pair of tweezers motionless in his hand, to see a massive, grey form striding across the room.
The Rhino was bearing down on him with a tray of food in his hands.
Somehow, seeing the Rhino in the middle of all this was just disconcerting in a way that Doc Ock and Dr. Connor's presences weren't. Maybe it was the foot-long horn, which was disconcerting anywhere. Maybe it was the fact that the strip of black cloth tied around one big, grey arm proclaimed him to be a guard, instead of a prisoner.
The last time Tony had seen Aleksei Sytsevich, he had been behind bars at Rikers Island. Now, he was apparently a prison guard himself.
The Rhino drew even with Tony and kept walking, not heading for him after all. The plastic tray was incongruously small in his dinner-plate-sized hands, and contained a cup of coffee and a bowl of the bland protein mush the Argonians had served them all for breakfast.
He set the tray down almost timidly on the far corner of Doc Ock's worktable. Octavius snarled something at him, and the Rhino flinched and scurried away.
Tony stared after him, even more disconcerted than before. Had the Rhino just done something… nice?
He realized belatedly that he was still holding the tweezers and set them down, exchanging them for a small screwdriver. He, along with all the other scientists, prisoners and volunteers -- and there seemed to be relatively little difference between the two, thus far -- had had to go line up on the far side of the room to receive his ration of unappetizing food from one of the grey-uniformed Argonians. He had only the vaguest sense of time, this far under the earth, with only the Argonian's asynchronic schedule to judge things by, but he thought they were being kept on a nocturnal schedule, being fed roughly at dusk and dawn.
Tony hadn't finished what he was thinking of as breakfast; it had no taste, and he still felt slightly sick when he tried to eat, anyway. His ribs hurt, his head hurt, and the bruises on his face made chewing less than fun.
Octavius, pinned in place by his arms, hadn't lined up for food with the others. It hadn't occurred to Tony to bring him any; Steve would have thought of it.
Tony had not previously associated the Rhino with random acts of charity.
By the time mid-day and the next guard shift change rolled around, Tony was thoroughly frustrated with the maddeningly slow pace he had set for himself. He itched to rip the missile completely apart now so that he could see how the hell it worked.
He didn't even have secondary and tertiary projects to distract himself with. In his own lab, he usually had at least three things going on at once, sometimes as many as ten, so that he could put a project down and move on to a different one whenever he got restless or stuck on something. Or bored.
Usually, he could never get far enough away from outside distractions when he was trying to work on something. Pepper or Happy or Jarvis or one of the other Avengers was always interrupting him to try and make him do something annoying like attend an investors meeting, or sign something, or talk to the press, or eat. Now, Tony was starting to think that he'd actually be grateful if Pepper appeared next to his workbench with a cell phone in one hand and an annoyed expression. At least then he'd know that she was alright.
He didn't have anything to distract himself from thinking about that, either.
Close to a week since he'd gone undercover, and thus far his main accomplishment was learning that the Argonians had nuclear capability (unsurprising, since they also had space flight) but apparently needed Tony to reverse engineer their own technology for them. It didn't make any sense, but then, none of this made any sense.
So Tony gave up on the whole thing for now, and started trying to do an imaginary redesign on the armor inside his head. He needed to streamline it enough so that he could get it inside a briefcase again.
"Tony."
There were some problems with the power loads it was running, too. Not that the armor couldn't handle them, but Hank seemed convinced that the stripped down shielding that had saved Tony five point three pounds in overall weight was exposing him to dangerous levels of electrical current. So stripping it down further to cut away some of the mass would have to be a last-resort option.
"Tony. Come on, that thing can't be that interesting. You haven't even done anything with it yet."
Tony blinked, refocusing with an effort. Possibly skipping dinner and breakfast hadn't actually been a good idea.
Clint was leaning one hip on a corner of the lab bench, poking at the missile casing. "So, does this explode?"
"In theory, yes, but they took the nuclear material out."
Clint took a hurried step back, wiping his hand off on his pants. "It's not still radioactive, is it? Shouldn't you be wearing some kind of shielding?"
"They took the potentially-radioactive pieces out," Tony repeated. "Any residual radiation would be too minor to seriously affect me. If I had better instruments, I could analyze it to find out what kind of isotope this thing uses, though."
Clint raised his eyebrows. "I thought you weren't actually working for them?"
"I'm not," Tony protested, feeling a faint rush of guilt -- he shouldn't be interested in this. Shouldn't be enjoying it, even on an intellectual level. "I'm just curious."
"Whatever. I found Jan."
Tony froze, staring at Clint, his moral quandary over the Argonian missile suddenly distant and unimportant. "She's not here is she?"
Clint blinked. "No. No, of course she's not here. She's inside the city, but not here. She's with Cap and the rest of the team. I didn't ask where; it's probably better that we don't know."
"Yes," Tony agreed absently, "it's safer that way." With Steve and the rest of the team, he'd said. The others were safe, still together. Still alive.
Steve was still alive. He'd never doubted it, not really -- if anyone could survive an alien invasion, it would be Steve -- but knowing it for sure made something inside his chest unknot.
He hadn't been able to save Jocasta, had only maybe been able to save Happy and Pepper, but at the very least, his team was still safe. And there was somebody out there to get a message out to, which meant that what he and Clint were doing wasn't entirely hopeless.
"I'm meeting her again tomorrow," Clint went on. He had animation in his voice again, and his posture had lost the stiff edge it had had since Tony had met him on the transport. "They need information about how the Argonians' power structure works, what they're doing here."
Tony nodded. There was a sudden, high-pitched ringing sound in his ears. Relief did funny things to you.
Clint frowned, peering at Tony with narrowed eyes. "What's wrong with you?" he asked bluntly. "Have you eaten anything today? Please tell me you're not suddenly bleeding internally from all those cracked ribs or something."
"My ribs are fine," Tony assured him, for what was probably the third time. He sat down carefully on the side of his cot, making sure not to jar said ribs and prove himself a liar. They were already better than they had been a few days ago, but he wasn't exactly ready to go ten rounds with the Mandarin yet. "The food tastes like cardboard."
Clint was still frowning. "How about I see if they have any leftover cardboard to give you?"
Tony shook his head, the dizziness subsiding now that he was off his feet. "If you start asking for special favors for me, they'll get suspicious. Anyway, it's only a few hours until dinner. They seem to like strict schedules."
Clint shrugged, his frown already slipping away. "Fine, have it your way." Then he grinned. "Didn't I tell you the others would turn out to be all right? They've already got some kind of plan for fighting back, too, just like we thought Cap would. Now we just have to figure out what the hell these guys want." He paused, then added, more seriously, "And how to make them go away."
Tony wished he could believe it would be that easy. "We just have to keep our eyes open," he said. "They're bound to let something slip. The fact that they think we're willing to work with them can't hurt."
"You sound pretty sure." Clint straightened from his slouch against the workbench as one of the other scientists glanced their way -- an average-looking man with brown hair, one of the handful Tony didn't recognize. It looked like their conversation was over.
"Trust me," Tony told him, forcing a smile. "I've done this before."
***
"Good evening, New York. I'm Ben Urich, and this is Daily Bugle Radio.
"The city of New York is still reeling from the Argonian takeover, as people recover from the initial shock and begin to realize the true extent of the damage and losses.
"Dozen, possibly hundreds, of the city's police force and emergency workers are dead, their tasks now carried out by Argonian soldiers and human collaborators. The Argonians have opened their ranks to human volunteers, setting up recruitment centers in the Madison Square Garden auditoriums. They are making a special effort to hire scientists and engineers of all kinds, particularly physicists and-"
"Are the aliens paying us advertising fees, Urich?"
"No, they're-"
"Then why are you giving their recruitment campaign free publicity?"
"Jonah, if you'd like to make editorial changes to the broadcast, maybe you could look over the transcripts before we're on the air?"
*The sound of someone grumbling, words unintelligible*
"No one has yet been able to contact any of the scientists captured or hired by the Argonian Imperator. At Empire State University, where classes have resumed on a drastically scaled-down schedule, the absence of several of the school's most renowned faculty members is sorely felt.
"'They have us going to class again,' one student told a Bugle reporter, 'like everything is normal. But we all know it isn't. I keep wondering how I'm going to graduate without Professor Gruenwald's class to finish out my major. He's my thesis advisor, too, and nobody's decided what to do with his advisees or his classes yet. But then I remember what going on, and I think - does it even matter if I graduate? What good is an engineering degree going to do me when the only thing I can do with it is go work for the aliens?'
"It is a question many in the city are asking themselves these days. With the world turned so thoroughly upside down, is there any point in going on with our day-to-day lives?
"The answer, for many New Yorkers, is yes. Though fires from the Argonian attacks have only just been extinguished, and hospital emergency rooms are still full, many of the city's restaurants and stores have re-opened, making do with emergency generator power and taking cash only, since the computers that normally handle credit cards are still out of commission. Most restaurant and retail establishment owners say they intend to continue doing business as best they can until supplies run out.
"On Wall Street, however, one finds a different story altogether; the city's financial district is a ghost town. The world's financial markets have been shut down since shortly after the Argonians' arrival, and the NYSE is no exception…"
***
On the one hand, the clock in Grand Central Station was a classic, time honored, and easy-to-remember place to meet. On the other hand, damn it, damn it, why hadn't he picked someplace less conspicuous?
Clint had been loitering around the clock for five minutes now; if he hung around much longer, one of the other guards, human or Argonian, was eventually going to notice.
The station was weirdly lifeless at midday. At night, there were Argonians everywhere, and somehow even seeing the place filled with furry aliens was less strange than seeing Grand Central empty and echoing.
Clint rested one hand on the hilt of his Argonian-issue sword -- stupid ban on humans carrying distance weapons -- and stared intently at a patch of sunlight on the far wall, trying to look as if he were vigorously guarding the place against some as-yet-nonexistent threat.
The Argonians had bowed to necessity by arming their new human conscripts, but didn't want to trust them with something as destructive as their blasting guns, hence, swords. It was apparently not all that popular a move amongst some of them. The Argonian soldier who had presented Clint with his sword had looked damn pissy about it, snottily informing him that the honor of bearing edged weapons was usually reserved only for Argonian warriors.
As far as Clint was concerned, the Argonians were welcome to the stupid things. Jacques Duquesne had taught him a few fencing tricks once upon a time, back when the two of them had worked together on Coney Island before Jacques' decision to embark on a career of super-villainy, so he didn't have to worry about accidentally cutting off his own foot or anything, but he preferred distance weapons. Arrows gave you range, precision, and the ability to skewer somebody without the immediate risk of getting skewered in return.
Plus, it was curved -- more so than a scimitar or katana -- and the balance was weird. Maybe because Argonian hands had only four digits, maybe because their arms were longer; he didn't know.
There was a flutter of movement near the ceiling, and then Jan was diving down towards him, to settle inside his collar. It tickled, and a small part of Clint's mind was suddenly very aware that Jan had just crawled inside his clothing.
When the Argonians finally issued him a uniform, they were going to have to figure out a new place for her to hide.
"Sorry if I kept you waiting," she whispered. "The security outside is better today."
"Don't worry about it," Clint did his best to talk without moving his lips more than he had too, keeping his face angled away from the other guards. This whole thing would be easier if he smoked; he ought to see if any of the other human guards had cigarettes he could bum and use as props.
"Everyone knows what you and Tony are doing now," she went on. "Cap's not thrilled about it, but we don't have the resources to get both of you out yet, so he wants you to stay put for now."
"Good," Clint said. "Because I'm not leaving. The last thing we need is for Tony to succumb to his creepy fascination with Argonian weapons and go rogue."
"They have him working on weapons?" Jan went still against Clint's neck. "What kind of weapons?"
Clint shook his head fractionally. "I don't know. Alien ones. Some kind of missile or bomb. Tony says it's nuclear. They want him to reverse-engineer it and build them a copy. He thinks maybe they're testing him before they give him whatever it is they actually want all those scientists for." Why else waste time having him try to figure out how to duplicate something they already knew how to make? They had scientists of their own to do that, they had to; otherwise they wouldn't have bombs and blasting guns and spaceships in the first place.
Jan was tapping her foot gently against his shoulder. It was incredibly distracting. "He'll be bound to find out something useful, at least." She sighed. "What we really need to know is anything and everything he can find out about how that shield works, and what they're using for power."
That one, Clint could answer, at least in part. "They cannibalized something from the engine of one of their spaceships and attached it to the converters downstairs. They're running the entire subway system off it, so whatever it is, it's really damn powerful."
"So Cap was right," she murmured. "They really have set up shop in the converter room."
How had Cap figured that out? Clint had never heard of the place before the Argonians had escorted him down there. "It's the size of a football field, so far underground that you can hear water running on the other sides of the walls, and it's full of creepy old machinery. It works, though, even with whatever their power source is. They're already using the subway to move supplies between here and Penn Station."
"What kind of supplies?" she asked sharply.
"Food, building materials," he tapped a finger against his sword hilt, "weapons. They're using it as a supply depot for the stuff they brought in on their spaceships. Apparently, it's not pretty enough to bother living in."
"That's… very interesting," she said slowly. Tap, tap, tap, went her foot. Clint fought the urge to squirm.
She hesitated, then gave a little cough and said, wryly, "Hank wanted to be here instead of me, you know. He has a whole laundry list of questions he wants to ask Tony."
"There's no way I'm ever letting Hank crawl around inside my clothes," Clint replied automatically. Then, because he'd heard Hank and Tony discuss scientific things before, "What kind of questions? There's no way I'll be able to remember the answers to all of them, not once Tony starts going into detail."
"I have them written down." Clint could hear a faint rustling sound, and felt the stiff edges of a folded piece of paper pressing against his neck. Jan went on, "If you can, get Tony to write his replies. Just consider me your personal carrier pigeon."
Clint nodded, the tips of Jan's wings brushing against the underside of his jaw. "Good idea; that should cut down on the telephone effect."
"What the hell are you mumbling to yourself about, Barton?"
Clint's heart lurched in his chest, and he spun around to find the Scorpion standing behind him, sneering. As he moved, Jan dove under Clint's collar and flattened herself against his shoulder -- he could actually feel her getting lighter as she shrank further.
"Nothing." Clint shrugged, trying desperately to look and sound casual. "What else is there to do? It's not like anyone's going to be stupid enough to try and break in here. I mean, there are a couple people who might be that dumb, but you and the Rhino are already here."
The Scorpion snarled, lashing his cybernetic tail against the floor with loud clang. "You hero types think you're so high and mighty," he snarled. "But look who's down here working for the aliens with the rest of us." He turned on his heel and stalked away, not giving Clint a chance to respond.
"Careful," Clint called after him. "Our bosses will be pissed if you break the floor."
The Scorpion kept going; maybe he hadn't heard.
There was a long moment of silence, while Clint counted his blessings.
"Is he gone?" Jan breathed, her voice barely audible.
"Yeah." Clint nodded, making the gesture as small as he could.
Jan made a little, half-laughing noise. "That was way too close."
"Sorry." Clint could feel himself flushing, and hoped it wasn't too noticeable. He wondered if Jan could feel his skin heating, too, and for some reason that just made his face burn harder. "He shouldn't have been able to sneak up on me like that. It's a good thing Cap's not here; he'd kick my ass."
"Mine too." Jan sounded amused, but there was strain underneath it. "I better go now, before we actually do get caught."
"When will you be back?" Clint really hoped he didn't sound as pathetic as he thought he did. Suddenly, the idea of finishing out the rest of this guard shift by himself -- and the next shift, and the one after that -- seemed miserably lonely.
"I don't know." Jan hesitated, then, "I can't risk coming here every day. It's too much of a risk. But I'll come back as soon as I can. I don't know when that will be, though."
"I'll try to stay on this shift," Clint said. "Look for me here at noon. Not by the clock, though." It felt like every eye in the station was on him, and never mind that the place was practically empty. He glanced around, looking for some place less conspicuous, preferably somewhere where they'd be hidden from view enough that Jan wouldn't have to hide inside his clothes. "The Metrazur, up on the East Balcony." It was over to the side of the concourse, right by the station's huge floor-to-ceiling windows. The bright midday sun kept most of the Argonian's away at this time of day, and the majority of the other human guards were concentrated on the ground floor of the main concourse, clustered around the doors and shop windows.
"Good idea." Jan shifted slightly, and Clint twitched. It tickled when she did that. "I'll look for you there when I can."
Clint nodded fractionally again, and then Jan was slipping out from her hiding place.
"See you soon, Clint. Be careful." And then she was gone, before Clint had a chance to say, "You, too."
He stood there staring after her for a minute or so, until an Argonian guard showed up to replace the Scorpion.
***
Wanda had never realized just how wide the East River was before.
The long row of docks that made up the Brooklyn Navy Yard were still several hundred feet away, and she and Carol were stuck out in open water, their commandeered water taxi painfully visible to any Argonian that happened to look their way.
She had laid a hex around their boat to attempt to make that outcome less likely, but she rarely tried to use her chaos power as something as intangible as other people's perceptions or behavior, and she wasn't sure how well it would work, or if it would even work at all. Her powers had been unstable for so long that, now that they would once more do exactly what she wanted, she almost felt as if she had to learn them all over again.
Beside her, Carol had one hand on the boat's wheel, and the other resting on the boat's instrument console. Her eyes were constantly moving, keeping a close watch on the water and sky around them.
Both sky and water remained empty, as if mocking their tension. When Wanda had first come to New York, the continual rush of traffic -- cars, people, boats, even the intermittent thrumming of helicopters overheard -- had been overwhelming. Now, the silence was even more oppressive, offset by the staccato beats of the boat's motor.
Wanda fancied she could hear it echoing off the glass walls of the skyscrapers behind them.
"There may not be anybody left on the ship," Carol said. She was squinting ahead into the faintly violet-tinted sunlight, not looking at Wanda. She was in what she and Steve called "civilian clothes," "The Argonians would have made it one of their first targets, once they realized it was a military vessel."
"Maybe we'll get lucky," Wanda offered. She knew too much about the vagaries of fate and fortune to really believe in luck anymore, though -- destiny was beyond human or even divine control, and probability all too easily altered. If anything, probability seemed to tilt toward negative outcomes around her. Her mother. Her children. Vision. Simon. Everyone she got close to seemed to suffer for it.
"We never get lucky." Carol turned the wheel a fraction, adjusting their heading. "Lucky would be discovering that the destroyer has a full crew and that the deck guns are still operational."
"Even if there aren't any people, there has to be something there we can use." When all else failed, you could try to make your own luck, and the Avengers were good at that. It was that, or give up entirely.
The destroyer looked totally deserted, its decks empty. Its massive, blue-grey bulk dwarfed their little water taxi, and as they pulled up along side it, she could see wide patches of blackened metal streaking its hull, left by the Argonians' weapons.
Carol tied the water taxi off against the ship's immense anchor chain, and took Wanda by the arm. "Come on," she said, and then they were airborne, Carol holding Wanda with one arm under her knees.
Being carried along for the ride by someone with the ability to fly always made Wanda feel silly, like Lois Lane being carted around by Superman. It didn't help that there were a limited number of ways to carry another person while flying, all of which involved large amounts of physical contact.
She shouldn't have worn a skirt this morning. The fabric billowed around her legs as Carol flew upwards toward the ship's deck, and Wanda reached out with the hand that wasn't wrapped around Carol's neck to try and pin it down.
The heels of Carol's boots rang hollowly against the metal deck plates, and then Wanda was deposited unceremoniously back on her feet. "Let's go see if anybody's home," Carol said, striding towards the closest hatch.
It was locked. This only stopped Carol for a moment. She braced her feet, wrapped both hands around the door handle, and pulled, and the door tore open with a groan of metal.
Standing just inside the shadows of the entrance was a very young, very nervous looking marine. The gun in his hands was aimed squarely at Carol's chest.
"Stand down, corporal," Carol said, holding up her empty hands. "We're not aliens."
"How did you get the door open?" he asked, the gun's barrel not wavering. "Um, ma'am."
Wanda took a step forward, one hand held low behind her back, gathering power to hex his gun if she needed to. "We're Avengers. We'd like to speak to your commanding officer."
"I'm under orders not to let anyone in, ma'am," he said, though he did lower the end of the gun slightly. "They have humans working for them."
"Look, just tell your CO we're here," Carol said. "Can you do that?"
The corporal nodded at someone hidden from view further inside the ship, and there was the sound of footsteps moving away.
Several long minutes of awkward silence later, just at the point where Wanda was starting to feel uncomfortable -- once, she and Carol would have talked to each other in this situation, breaking the tension with easy banter and jokes -- she heard two sets of footsteps returning down the corridor.
A sailor approached from behind the corporal, followed by a middle-aged marine with red slashes on his uniform sleeves.
"I thought he was going to bring your commander," Wanda said, nodding at the two approaching men. Neither of them was wearing an officer's uniform.
The corporal cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Master Sergeant Colan is our commander, ma'am. The aliens killed all the officers, except for Lieutenant Goodwin, and he's in sick bay with plasma burns all over him."
"Oh," Wanda said, softly. It wasn't entirely surprising; given what they'd done to the National Guard, but… a ship this size would have had a lot of officers, some of them barely out of college.
Wanda looked at the corporal's white-knuckled grip on his gun -- the gun he was still pointing at them -- and wondered if he'd seen his officers die. If that was why he was so reluctant to lower his weapon. She could remember being this kid's age, traveling through Europe with Pietro and living with the constant fear that someone would recognize them for what they were. It had taken almost a year of living in America before she was comfortable in crowds again, before her first thought when she found herself in the middle of a large group of strangers wasn't how easily they could turn into a mob.
"Seaman Olazaba here says you're Avengers," Master Sergeant Colan began, without preamble. "Which ones are you?"
"I'm Warbird." Carol nodded at Wanda. "She's the Scarlet Witch."
He nodded, apparently thinking that over. "And which one of you ripped the door off its hinges?"
"It was locked," Carol said, not quite defensively. "We're here to ask you for help, Master Sergeant. Those of us who are left are going to fight them, but there aren't enough of us superheroes to do it by ourselves. We need to form a resistance movement, strike back at them. Your men have training, weapons," she nodded at the corporal's gun.
"So you're offering, what, an alliance?"
Wanda nodded. "We have a safe-house in Manhattan. We can offer you accommodations there, with power."
Colan shook his head. "We've got power already, as long as we have enough fuel to keep the engines running. I'm not leaving this ship, and my men aren't leaving it either. They may have slagged our deck guns, but there's still too much sensitive equipment here to let the aliens get their furry paws on it."
"It would be safer-" Wanda began, but Carol cut her off.
"We understand. We're not asking you to abandon your command, but would you still be willing to work with us?"
"Of course we'll work with you," Colan said. "We want those alien bastards gone. He nodded at the corridor behind him. "You better come inside and tell me what you have in mind."
Several minutes later, Wanda and Carol were seated at a long table inside what had once been the ship's briefing room, talking to a motley collection of non-commissioned officers. Colan's decision to stay aboard the destroyer was backed up by the next-highest ranked man, a Navy master chief. Rather than join forces, the destroyer's crew suggested that they function as an autonomous unit, and keep the Avengers informed of their actions via radio contact.
"The more decentralized resistance to the Argonians is, the harder a time they'll have rooting us out," Colan was saying. "They're the ones that have to be tightly organized. We mainly have to be destructive. Between us and the army guys at Fort Hamilton, we've got this side of the river covered. You think you people can handle Manhattan?"
"We're superheroes," Wanda assured him dryly. "We excel at destruction." The question was going to be how much collateral damage they could get away with causing along the way -- there would be little point in driving out the Argonians if they made the city unlivable in the process. They weren't yet at the point of scorched earth tactics.
They might get there, though. Cap seemed to think that they were settling in for a prolonged fight.
Carol was leaning forward, elbows on the table and hands folded in front of her. "One of our biggest weaknesses is transport across the East River. The tunnels are out of the questions, and the bridges are heavily guarded."
"We've got that covered," one of the Navy chiefs said. "There are half a dozen Coast Guard ships trapped inside this thing. The Argonians can't guard the entire river."
"What kind of shape is your communications equipment in?" Carol asked.
"Everything that needs satellite is blocked by that damn shield, but the ship's radio still works."
They listened to Carol, Wanda realized, as the discussion went on. In spite of the fact that she wore neither a costume nor a uniform, she had succeeded in getting them to think of her -- and treat her -- as a fellow soldier, an officer.
The last time she'd seen Carol, the other woman had been falling apart. Had something happened on the West Coast to help her pull herself together again? She hoped so. Watching Carol walk out of the mansion, knowing that she had failed to help her, Wanda had been afraid that she had lost Carol as a friend forever, and worse, that Carol was going to lose herself.
Wanda hadn't been there when Tony had been drinking, but she'd seen the aftermath, and she knew that it had nearly destroyed him. She hadn't wanted to watch that happen to Carol, as well. Wanda had already failed her once, when she had stood by, helpless, and watched Marcus abduct her, and that, too, had nearly destroyed Carol.
It was good to watch Carol be confident and in control. She had already lost Vision -- Hank swore he could and would reassemble him, but he couldn't guarantee that a rebuilt and reprogrammed Vision would still be Vision, with his memories and emotions intact. Wanda had lost him long ago, really, the first time he had been destroyed and rebuilt, and come back with no memory of their relationship, but they had managed to salvage a friendship out of the wreckage of their marriage, and now… if he came back as an emotionless android again, they would lose even that.
She had already lost Vision. She didn't want to lose anyone else.
Carol and Colan were now debating the benefits of conducting their radio communication in an encrypted version Morse code -- on the one hand, it would keep the Argonians from being able to listen in on their communications, but on the other, obviously encoded radio transmissions would draw the Argonians' attention to them.
"Don't forget that they have humans working for them," Wanda pointed out. "They'll be able to find a translator for something as widely known as Morse code, and once they do that, they'll be able to figure out any kind of letter substitution. They have scientists working for them who probably used to do that kind of thing for fun."
"You're right." Colan gave her a grudging nod. "It's not worth the attention it'll draw to us."
"We could have used a book code," a man around Wanda's age muttered from further down the table.
One of the other Navy NCOs shook his head. "Good idea, but it would still draw attention."
And the debate went on, with Wanda's one contribution merely a ripple in the conversation. By the time a simple set of code words had been hammered out, the clock on the far wall was indicating that they'd been there over an hour.
The West Coast Avengers had once come up with a similar code in about fifteen minutes, using nothing but Dr. Who references. Ten minutes, if you subtracted the five minutes Clint and Mockingbird had spent arguing with Hank and Vision over whether Dr. Who was a timeless classic or so bad it was worthy of inclusion on Mystery Science Theater.
Wanda forbore to mention this. The rest of the table already took her less seriously simply by virtue of the fact that she was a civilian; she didn't need to encourage that.
"We'll be in touch," Carol said, as the two of them stood to go. "If you need back up, or change your minds about coming in…"
"We'll let you know." Colan extended his hand to Carol, and then to Wanda. "Olazaba will escort you out." He paused for a second, then added, "And fix the door before you go."
Carol shrugged one shoulder, looking not at all embarrassed. "Sorry about that."
Olazaba led them back out, down the maze of bare metal corridors. The painfully young corporal was still standing guard by the door, rifle in hand.
"I'm, um, sorry I almost shot you, ma'am," he said.
Carol shook her head, her long hair sliding over her shoulders. "It happens. Luckily, I'm mostly bullet proof."
She turned, and picked up the metal door with one hand, lifting it smoothly back into place. The door probably weighed more than Wanda did, yet Carol made the movement look effortless. She used her fist to pound it back into place, then stepped back, eyeing it critically.
"Here." Wanda stepped forward, raising one hand. "Let me." Restoring the hinges to their previous state took less power than attempting to divert attention from their boat, but it was significantly more difficult. Her powers were naturally entropic in nature, and repairing things was always harder than destroying them.
She watched with satisfaction as the residue of chaos power faded and the hinges cooled. It had been a long time since she'd had this level of control. "You have no idea how much I missed being able to do that." She smiled at Carol. "You did a good job in there, by the way. I guess we still make a pretty good team."
Carol snorted. "You don't have to patronize me. I know I was only along because I know how to speak to these guys." She turned on her heel and started for the side of the deck, then stopped and waited for Wanda to catch up to her, her whole body radiating impatience. "Come on," she snapped. "Grab on and let's get out of here."
The trip back across the river was made in dead silence, and somehow, the expanse of water seemed even broader and more strangely desolate than it had just a few hours ago.
***
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five (a) | Chapter Five (b) | Chapter Six (a) | Chapter Six (b) | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten | Chapter Eleven | Chapter Twelve | Chapter Thirteen | Chapter Fourteen | Chapter Fifteen | Chapter Sixteen
Authors:
seanchai and elspethdixonRated: PG-13
Pairings: Steve/Tony, Hank/Jan, Carol/Wanda
Warnings: No much, really. Some swearing and violence.
Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this derivative work. We're paid in love, people.
Summary: Aliens have invaded earth, and the Avengers are scattered. While Steve leads the resistance, Tony once again finds himself playing captive scientist. In the midst of a violent alien regime, separated by seemingly insurmountable boundaries, Steve and Tony have nothing to keep themselves going but each other.
Author's Note:The point in volume three that we're branching off from was originally published around '98-'99, but since Marvel time runs at a slower speed than real world time, early volume three is probably four or so years ago in canon time. Hence 2004 and troops in Iraq. Also, just a heads up; this fic is really, really long. Like, over two hundred pages long. We'll start by posting every other week, though we're hoping to start posting once a week, eventually.
X-posted to Marvel Slash.
Warning: this chapter is un-beta'd. I've read through this for errors, but please feel free to point out any mistakes I may have missed.
If you stood still and listened, a distant rushing noise was just barely audible, faint, but continuous. It had taken until the end of the first day before Tony had realized that it was coming from the other side of the walls.
They were underneath the island's water table, below sea level. Which meant there must be pumps somewhere, still running, to keep the vast room full of machinery and computer equipment that the Argonians had confined their human scientists in from filling up with water. If he could find them and disable them, the entire operation would be flooded out.
Of course, if he did that, he and all of the other imprisoned scientists would drown.
There had to be over fifty people down here, most of them people Tony recognized. Dr. Gruenwald, who had been a professor at Empire University's engineering department for as long as Tony could remember. Ivan Reis and Michaela Grell, who had both worked for Oscorp once upon a time, before leaving to seek greener pastures and saner employers elsewhere. Several more people whose faces he didn't recognize, but whose names he had probably seen attached to articles in science and engineering journals.
There were also other, less reputable but more instantly recognizable faces. The Argonians had cast their net wide, and obviously hadn't cared whether the talent they assembled came from university research labs or cellblocks on Rikers Island.
Otto Octavius was stationed less than thirty feet away from Tony, his massive robotic arms hanging limply at his sides. He had been hauled in yesterday, clearly an unwilling participant in the Argonian's plans, and Tony hadn't seen him move more than a step or so from his position behind his lab bench since then -- he wasn't sure if Octavius even could, dragging the weight of those arms behind him.
The Argonians had given Tony a lab bench and an assortment of tools, and handed him a defunct alien missile. They had been coy about exactly what it was, telling him only that they wanted him to "build them a functional replica of this device," but Tony had spent half his life designing and building various kinds of weapons, and he knew a missile when he saw one.
He had tried to stall, telling them that a single example wasn't going to be enough, that he would need to disassemble several "devices" before he could determine the principles they operated on, and the grey-uniformed translator had nodded sympathetically and told Tony that no more could be spared and he would just have to "do his best."
Then he'd patted Tony on the shoulder in much the same way someone might pat a particularly clever pet dog, and left him.
It was an utterly fascinating piece of technology; clearly meant to function by means of nuclear fission or fusion, though they'd taken the nuclear material out, but completely different from any of the American or Russian nuclear weapons Tony had ever seen. He had been poking at it on and off for two days, and still wasn't entirely sure how its guidance system worked. He was still trying to figure out how exactly the detonation process worked; implosion, obviously -- it was too complex to be a simple atomic bomb -- but how many stages, and what kind of radioactive material? What kind of explosive yield was it designed to produce, and what kind of delivery system did it use, and… He had dozens of questions, and he couldn't ask the Argonians any of them without revealing that he'd made much more progress than he was claiming.
Working on the missile had given Tony something to do, something to keep him from dwelling on the fact that he was essentially trapped dozens or maybe even hundreds of feet beneath the earth, under armed alien guard, and had only managed to catch brief glimpses of Clint since getting here.
"Here," in Tony's case, meant an eight-foot square section of cavern between the rock wall and one of the room's massive rotary converters, containing a work area and a fold-out cot for sleeping. There were five of the giant converters, each of them over six feet high, and they were what had told Tony where he was.
Once, all of the power for the New York City subway system had run through these converters. The long banks of modern machines that had supplanted them were under constant, armed Argonian guard at the far end of the room.
Tony's attempts to go exploring had thus far been curtailed by the close watch that was being kept over them.
He was far from alone in his attempts to go exploring; this morning, the Argonians had caught another scientist trying to climb one of the converters, and had pulled him down roughly, with much shouting and lashing of tails.
It was the main reason why Tony hadn't tried it yet; the converters had been in constant operation for most of the 20th century, and there had to be parts in there he could scavenge. He wasn't entirely sure what he would do with them, trapped underground under constant supervision, but he was sure he would think of something.
Well, that, and his ribs still hurt any time he moved. He was in better shape than he had been the last time he'd been held prisoner like this, though. No shrapnel wounds slowly killing him, and no threats of immanent death if he failed to co-operate.
Meanwhile, he had a nuclear missile to pretend he was making no progress on.
Conscious of the grey-uniformed translator's eyes on him -- Tony wasn't sure, but he thought it was the same Argonian who had been present when he'd surrendered -- he re-opened the side panel of the missile and started to very carefully -- and slowly -- remove a piece of circuitry. It wasn't as if he'd never done this before.
He pulled out a single wire, stared at it for a good thirty seconds, and then laid it carefully on the workbench. If he dragged it out long enough, he might be able to use up two or three days just taking the thing apart. Then he could lay its components out on the workbench and the floor and arrange them in random patterns. As far as he could tell, that was what some of the engineers and mechanics who'd formerly worked for Stark Industries had done when they were clueless and incompetent and hoping to pretend they weren't.
Tony turned back to the opened missile and stared at its exposed innards some more, scratching absently at the half-healed cut on his cheek. He'd pulled the bandages off two days ago, when they'd started to itch.
There was movement to Tony's left, and he glanced up, a pair of tweezers motionless in his hand, to see a massive, grey form striding across the room.
The Rhino was bearing down on him with a tray of food in his hands.
Somehow, seeing the Rhino in the middle of all this was just disconcerting in a way that Doc Ock and Dr. Connor's presences weren't. Maybe it was the foot-long horn, which was disconcerting anywhere. Maybe it was the fact that the strip of black cloth tied around one big, grey arm proclaimed him to be a guard, instead of a prisoner.
The last time Tony had seen Aleksei Sytsevich, he had been behind bars at Rikers Island. Now, he was apparently a prison guard himself.
The Rhino drew even with Tony and kept walking, not heading for him after all. The plastic tray was incongruously small in his dinner-plate-sized hands, and contained a cup of coffee and a bowl of the bland protein mush the Argonians had served them all for breakfast.
He set the tray down almost timidly on the far corner of Doc Ock's worktable. Octavius snarled something at him, and the Rhino flinched and scurried away.
Tony stared after him, even more disconcerted than before. Had the Rhino just done something… nice?
He realized belatedly that he was still holding the tweezers and set them down, exchanging them for a small screwdriver. He, along with all the other scientists, prisoners and volunteers -- and there seemed to be relatively little difference between the two, thus far -- had had to go line up on the far side of the room to receive his ration of unappetizing food from one of the grey-uniformed Argonians. He had only the vaguest sense of time, this far under the earth, with only the Argonian's asynchronic schedule to judge things by, but he thought they were being kept on a nocturnal schedule, being fed roughly at dusk and dawn.
Tony hadn't finished what he was thinking of as breakfast; it had no taste, and he still felt slightly sick when he tried to eat, anyway. His ribs hurt, his head hurt, and the bruises on his face made chewing less than fun.
Octavius, pinned in place by his arms, hadn't lined up for food with the others. It hadn't occurred to Tony to bring him any; Steve would have thought of it.
Tony had not previously associated the Rhino with random acts of charity.
By the time mid-day and the next guard shift change rolled around, Tony was thoroughly frustrated with the maddeningly slow pace he had set for himself. He itched to rip the missile completely apart now so that he could see how the hell it worked.
He didn't even have secondary and tertiary projects to distract himself with. In his own lab, he usually had at least three things going on at once, sometimes as many as ten, so that he could put a project down and move on to a different one whenever he got restless or stuck on something. Or bored.
Usually, he could never get far enough away from outside distractions when he was trying to work on something. Pepper or Happy or Jarvis or one of the other Avengers was always interrupting him to try and make him do something annoying like attend an investors meeting, or sign something, or talk to the press, or eat. Now, Tony was starting to think that he'd actually be grateful if Pepper appeared next to his workbench with a cell phone in one hand and an annoyed expression. At least then he'd know that she was alright.
He didn't have anything to distract himself from thinking about that, either.
Close to a week since he'd gone undercover, and thus far his main accomplishment was learning that the Argonians had nuclear capability (unsurprising, since they also had space flight) but apparently needed Tony to reverse engineer their own technology for them. It didn't make any sense, but then, none of this made any sense.
So Tony gave up on the whole thing for now, and started trying to do an imaginary redesign on the armor inside his head. He needed to streamline it enough so that he could get it inside a briefcase again.
"Tony."
There were some problems with the power loads it was running, too. Not that the armor couldn't handle them, but Hank seemed convinced that the stripped down shielding that had saved Tony five point three pounds in overall weight was exposing him to dangerous levels of electrical current. So stripping it down further to cut away some of the mass would have to be a last-resort option.
"Tony. Come on, that thing can't be that interesting. You haven't even done anything with it yet."
Tony blinked, refocusing with an effort. Possibly skipping dinner and breakfast hadn't actually been a good idea.
Clint was leaning one hip on a corner of the lab bench, poking at the missile casing. "So, does this explode?"
"In theory, yes, but they took the nuclear material out."
Clint took a hurried step back, wiping his hand off on his pants. "It's not still radioactive, is it? Shouldn't you be wearing some kind of shielding?"
"They took the potentially-radioactive pieces out," Tony repeated. "Any residual radiation would be too minor to seriously affect me. If I had better instruments, I could analyze it to find out what kind of isotope this thing uses, though."
Clint raised his eyebrows. "I thought you weren't actually working for them?"
"I'm not," Tony protested, feeling a faint rush of guilt -- he shouldn't be interested in this. Shouldn't be enjoying it, even on an intellectual level. "I'm just curious."
"Whatever. I found Jan."
Tony froze, staring at Clint, his moral quandary over the Argonian missile suddenly distant and unimportant. "She's not here is she?"
Clint blinked. "No. No, of course she's not here. She's inside the city, but not here. She's with Cap and the rest of the team. I didn't ask where; it's probably better that we don't know."
"Yes," Tony agreed absently, "it's safer that way." With Steve and the rest of the team, he'd said. The others were safe, still together. Still alive.
Steve was still alive. He'd never doubted it, not really -- if anyone could survive an alien invasion, it would be Steve -- but knowing it for sure made something inside his chest unknot.
He hadn't been able to save Jocasta, had only maybe been able to save Happy and Pepper, but at the very least, his team was still safe. And there was somebody out there to get a message out to, which meant that what he and Clint were doing wasn't entirely hopeless.
"I'm meeting her again tomorrow," Clint went on. He had animation in his voice again, and his posture had lost the stiff edge it had had since Tony had met him on the transport. "They need information about how the Argonians' power structure works, what they're doing here."
Tony nodded. There was a sudden, high-pitched ringing sound in his ears. Relief did funny things to you.
Clint frowned, peering at Tony with narrowed eyes. "What's wrong with you?" he asked bluntly. "Have you eaten anything today? Please tell me you're not suddenly bleeding internally from all those cracked ribs or something."
"My ribs are fine," Tony assured him, for what was probably the third time. He sat down carefully on the side of his cot, making sure not to jar said ribs and prove himself a liar. They were already better than they had been a few days ago, but he wasn't exactly ready to go ten rounds with the Mandarin yet. "The food tastes like cardboard."
Clint was still frowning. "How about I see if they have any leftover cardboard to give you?"
Tony shook his head, the dizziness subsiding now that he was off his feet. "If you start asking for special favors for me, they'll get suspicious. Anyway, it's only a few hours until dinner. They seem to like strict schedules."
Clint shrugged, his frown already slipping away. "Fine, have it your way." Then he grinned. "Didn't I tell you the others would turn out to be all right? They've already got some kind of plan for fighting back, too, just like we thought Cap would. Now we just have to figure out what the hell these guys want." He paused, then added, more seriously, "And how to make them go away."
Tony wished he could believe it would be that easy. "We just have to keep our eyes open," he said. "They're bound to let something slip. The fact that they think we're willing to work with them can't hurt."
"You sound pretty sure." Clint straightened from his slouch against the workbench as one of the other scientists glanced their way -- an average-looking man with brown hair, one of the handful Tony didn't recognize. It looked like their conversation was over.
"Trust me," Tony told him, forcing a smile. "I've done this before."
"Good evening, New York. I'm Ben Urich, and this is Daily Bugle Radio.
"The city of New York is still reeling from the Argonian takeover, as people recover from the initial shock and begin to realize the true extent of the damage and losses.
"Dozen, possibly hundreds, of the city's police force and emergency workers are dead, their tasks now carried out by Argonian soldiers and human collaborators. The Argonians have opened their ranks to human volunteers, setting up recruitment centers in the Madison Square Garden auditoriums. They are making a special effort to hire scientists and engineers of all kinds, particularly physicists and-"
"Are the aliens paying us advertising fees, Urich?"
"No, they're-"
"Then why are you giving their recruitment campaign free publicity?"
"Jonah, if you'd like to make editorial changes to the broadcast, maybe you could look over the transcripts before we're on the air?"
*The sound of someone grumbling, words unintelligible*
"No one has yet been able to contact any of the scientists captured or hired by the Argonian Imperator. At Empire State University, where classes have resumed on a drastically scaled-down schedule, the absence of several of the school's most renowned faculty members is sorely felt.
"'They have us going to class again,' one student told a Bugle reporter, 'like everything is normal. But we all know it isn't. I keep wondering how I'm going to graduate without Professor Gruenwald's class to finish out my major. He's my thesis advisor, too, and nobody's decided what to do with his advisees or his classes yet. But then I remember what going on, and I think - does it even matter if I graduate? What good is an engineering degree going to do me when the only thing I can do with it is go work for the aliens?'
"It is a question many in the city are asking themselves these days. With the world turned so thoroughly upside down, is there any point in going on with our day-to-day lives?
"The answer, for many New Yorkers, is yes. Though fires from the Argonian attacks have only just been extinguished, and hospital emergency rooms are still full, many of the city's restaurants and stores have re-opened, making do with emergency generator power and taking cash only, since the computers that normally handle credit cards are still out of commission. Most restaurant and retail establishment owners say they intend to continue doing business as best they can until supplies run out.
"On Wall Street, however, one finds a different story altogether; the city's financial district is a ghost town. The world's financial markets have been shut down since shortly after the Argonians' arrival, and the NYSE is no exception…"
On the one hand, the clock in Grand Central Station was a classic, time honored, and easy-to-remember place to meet. On the other hand, damn it, damn it, why hadn't he picked someplace less conspicuous?
Clint had been loitering around the clock for five minutes now; if he hung around much longer, one of the other guards, human or Argonian, was eventually going to notice.
The station was weirdly lifeless at midday. At night, there were Argonians everywhere, and somehow even seeing the place filled with furry aliens was less strange than seeing Grand Central empty and echoing.
Clint rested one hand on the hilt of his Argonian-issue sword -- stupid ban on humans carrying distance weapons -- and stared intently at a patch of sunlight on the far wall, trying to look as if he were vigorously guarding the place against some as-yet-nonexistent threat.
The Argonians had bowed to necessity by arming their new human conscripts, but didn't want to trust them with something as destructive as their blasting guns, hence, swords. It was apparently not all that popular a move amongst some of them. The Argonian soldier who had presented Clint with his sword had looked damn pissy about it, snottily informing him that the honor of bearing edged weapons was usually reserved only for Argonian warriors.
As far as Clint was concerned, the Argonians were welcome to the stupid things. Jacques Duquesne had taught him a few fencing tricks once upon a time, back when the two of them had worked together on Coney Island before Jacques' decision to embark on a career of super-villainy, so he didn't have to worry about accidentally cutting off his own foot or anything, but he preferred distance weapons. Arrows gave you range, precision, and the ability to skewer somebody without the immediate risk of getting skewered in return.
Plus, it was curved -- more so than a scimitar or katana -- and the balance was weird. Maybe because Argonian hands had only four digits, maybe because their arms were longer; he didn't know.
There was a flutter of movement near the ceiling, and then Jan was diving down towards him, to settle inside his collar. It tickled, and a small part of Clint's mind was suddenly very aware that Jan had just crawled inside his clothing.
When the Argonians finally issued him a uniform, they were going to have to figure out a new place for her to hide.
"Sorry if I kept you waiting," she whispered. "The security outside is better today."
"Don't worry about it," Clint did his best to talk without moving his lips more than he had too, keeping his face angled away from the other guards. This whole thing would be easier if he smoked; he ought to see if any of the other human guards had cigarettes he could bum and use as props.
"Everyone knows what you and Tony are doing now," she went on. "Cap's not thrilled about it, but we don't have the resources to get both of you out yet, so he wants you to stay put for now."
"Good," Clint said. "Because I'm not leaving. The last thing we need is for Tony to succumb to his creepy fascination with Argonian weapons and go rogue."
"They have him working on weapons?" Jan went still against Clint's neck. "What kind of weapons?"
Clint shook his head fractionally. "I don't know. Alien ones. Some kind of missile or bomb. Tony says it's nuclear. They want him to reverse-engineer it and build them a copy. He thinks maybe they're testing him before they give him whatever it is they actually want all those scientists for." Why else waste time having him try to figure out how to duplicate something they already knew how to make? They had scientists of their own to do that, they had to; otherwise they wouldn't have bombs and blasting guns and spaceships in the first place.
Jan was tapping her foot gently against his shoulder. It was incredibly distracting. "He'll be bound to find out something useful, at least." She sighed. "What we really need to know is anything and everything he can find out about how that shield works, and what they're using for power."
That one, Clint could answer, at least in part. "They cannibalized something from the engine of one of their spaceships and attached it to the converters downstairs. They're running the entire subway system off it, so whatever it is, it's really damn powerful."
"So Cap was right," she murmured. "They really have set up shop in the converter room."
How had Cap figured that out? Clint had never heard of the place before the Argonians had escorted him down there. "It's the size of a football field, so far underground that you can hear water running on the other sides of the walls, and it's full of creepy old machinery. It works, though, even with whatever their power source is. They're already using the subway to move supplies between here and Penn Station."
"What kind of supplies?" she asked sharply.
"Food, building materials," he tapped a finger against his sword hilt, "weapons. They're using it as a supply depot for the stuff they brought in on their spaceships. Apparently, it's not pretty enough to bother living in."
"That's… very interesting," she said slowly. Tap, tap, tap, went her foot. Clint fought the urge to squirm.
She hesitated, then gave a little cough and said, wryly, "Hank wanted to be here instead of me, you know. He has a whole laundry list of questions he wants to ask Tony."
"There's no way I'm ever letting Hank crawl around inside my clothes," Clint replied automatically. Then, because he'd heard Hank and Tony discuss scientific things before, "What kind of questions? There's no way I'll be able to remember the answers to all of them, not once Tony starts going into detail."
"I have them written down." Clint could hear a faint rustling sound, and felt the stiff edges of a folded piece of paper pressing against his neck. Jan went on, "If you can, get Tony to write his replies. Just consider me your personal carrier pigeon."
Clint nodded, the tips of Jan's wings brushing against the underside of his jaw. "Good idea; that should cut down on the telephone effect."
"What the hell are you mumbling to yourself about, Barton?"
Clint's heart lurched in his chest, and he spun around to find the Scorpion standing behind him, sneering. As he moved, Jan dove under Clint's collar and flattened herself against his shoulder -- he could actually feel her getting lighter as she shrank further.
"Nothing." Clint shrugged, trying desperately to look and sound casual. "What else is there to do? It's not like anyone's going to be stupid enough to try and break in here. I mean, there are a couple people who might be that dumb, but you and the Rhino are already here."
The Scorpion snarled, lashing his cybernetic tail against the floor with loud clang. "You hero types think you're so high and mighty," he snarled. "But look who's down here working for the aliens with the rest of us." He turned on his heel and stalked away, not giving Clint a chance to respond.
"Careful," Clint called after him. "Our bosses will be pissed if you break the floor."
The Scorpion kept going; maybe he hadn't heard.
There was a long moment of silence, while Clint counted his blessings.
"Is he gone?" Jan breathed, her voice barely audible.
"Yeah." Clint nodded, making the gesture as small as he could.
Jan made a little, half-laughing noise. "That was way too close."
"Sorry." Clint could feel himself flushing, and hoped it wasn't too noticeable. He wondered if Jan could feel his skin heating, too, and for some reason that just made his face burn harder. "He shouldn't have been able to sneak up on me like that. It's a good thing Cap's not here; he'd kick my ass."
"Mine too." Jan sounded amused, but there was strain underneath it. "I better go now, before we actually do get caught."
"When will you be back?" Clint really hoped he didn't sound as pathetic as he thought he did. Suddenly, the idea of finishing out the rest of this guard shift by himself -- and the next shift, and the one after that -- seemed miserably lonely.
"I don't know." Jan hesitated, then, "I can't risk coming here every day. It's too much of a risk. But I'll come back as soon as I can. I don't know when that will be, though."
"I'll try to stay on this shift," Clint said. "Look for me here at noon. Not by the clock, though." It felt like every eye in the station was on him, and never mind that the place was practically empty. He glanced around, looking for some place less conspicuous, preferably somewhere where they'd be hidden from view enough that Jan wouldn't have to hide inside his clothes. "The Metrazur, up on the East Balcony." It was over to the side of the concourse, right by the station's huge floor-to-ceiling windows. The bright midday sun kept most of the Argonian's away at this time of day, and the majority of the other human guards were concentrated on the ground floor of the main concourse, clustered around the doors and shop windows.
"Good idea." Jan shifted slightly, and Clint twitched. It tickled when she did that. "I'll look for you there when I can."
Clint nodded fractionally again, and then Jan was slipping out from her hiding place.
"See you soon, Clint. Be careful." And then she was gone, before Clint had a chance to say, "You, too."
He stood there staring after her for a minute or so, until an Argonian guard showed up to replace the Scorpion.
Wanda had never realized just how wide the East River was before.
The long row of docks that made up the Brooklyn Navy Yard were still several hundred feet away, and she and Carol were stuck out in open water, their commandeered water taxi painfully visible to any Argonian that happened to look their way.
She had laid a hex around their boat to attempt to make that outcome less likely, but she rarely tried to use her chaos power as something as intangible as other people's perceptions or behavior, and she wasn't sure how well it would work, or if it would even work at all. Her powers had been unstable for so long that, now that they would once more do exactly what she wanted, she almost felt as if she had to learn them all over again.
Beside her, Carol had one hand on the boat's wheel, and the other resting on the boat's instrument console. Her eyes were constantly moving, keeping a close watch on the water and sky around them.
Both sky and water remained empty, as if mocking their tension. When Wanda had first come to New York, the continual rush of traffic -- cars, people, boats, even the intermittent thrumming of helicopters overheard -- had been overwhelming. Now, the silence was even more oppressive, offset by the staccato beats of the boat's motor.
Wanda fancied she could hear it echoing off the glass walls of the skyscrapers behind them.
"There may not be anybody left on the ship," Carol said. She was squinting ahead into the faintly violet-tinted sunlight, not looking at Wanda. She was in what she and Steve called "civilian clothes," "The Argonians would have made it one of their first targets, once they realized it was a military vessel."
"Maybe we'll get lucky," Wanda offered. She knew too much about the vagaries of fate and fortune to really believe in luck anymore, though -- destiny was beyond human or even divine control, and probability all too easily altered. If anything, probability seemed to tilt toward negative outcomes around her. Her mother. Her children. Vision. Simon. Everyone she got close to seemed to suffer for it.
"We never get lucky." Carol turned the wheel a fraction, adjusting their heading. "Lucky would be discovering that the destroyer has a full crew and that the deck guns are still operational."
"Even if there aren't any people, there has to be something there we can use." When all else failed, you could try to make your own luck, and the Avengers were good at that. It was that, or give up entirely.
The destroyer looked totally deserted, its decks empty. Its massive, blue-grey bulk dwarfed their little water taxi, and as they pulled up along side it, she could see wide patches of blackened metal streaking its hull, left by the Argonians' weapons.
Carol tied the water taxi off against the ship's immense anchor chain, and took Wanda by the arm. "Come on," she said, and then they were airborne, Carol holding Wanda with one arm under her knees.
Being carried along for the ride by someone with the ability to fly always made Wanda feel silly, like Lois Lane being carted around by Superman. It didn't help that there were a limited number of ways to carry another person while flying, all of which involved large amounts of physical contact.
She shouldn't have worn a skirt this morning. The fabric billowed around her legs as Carol flew upwards toward the ship's deck, and Wanda reached out with the hand that wasn't wrapped around Carol's neck to try and pin it down.
The heels of Carol's boots rang hollowly against the metal deck plates, and then Wanda was deposited unceremoniously back on her feet. "Let's go see if anybody's home," Carol said, striding towards the closest hatch.
It was locked. This only stopped Carol for a moment. She braced her feet, wrapped both hands around the door handle, and pulled, and the door tore open with a groan of metal.
Standing just inside the shadows of the entrance was a very young, very nervous looking marine. The gun in his hands was aimed squarely at Carol's chest.
"Stand down, corporal," Carol said, holding up her empty hands. "We're not aliens."
"How did you get the door open?" he asked, the gun's barrel not wavering. "Um, ma'am."
Wanda took a step forward, one hand held low behind her back, gathering power to hex his gun if she needed to. "We're Avengers. We'd like to speak to your commanding officer."
"I'm under orders not to let anyone in, ma'am," he said, though he did lower the end of the gun slightly. "They have humans working for them."
"Look, just tell your CO we're here," Carol said. "Can you do that?"
The corporal nodded at someone hidden from view further inside the ship, and there was the sound of footsteps moving away.
Several long minutes of awkward silence later, just at the point where Wanda was starting to feel uncomfortable -- once, she and Carol would have talked to each other in this situation, breaking the tension with easy banter and jokes -- she heard two sets of footsteps returning down the corridor.
A sailor approached from behind the corporal, followed by a middle-aged marine with red slashes on his uniform sleeves.
"I thought he was going to bring your commander," Wanda said, nodding at the two approaching men. Neither of them was wearing an officer's uniform.
The corporal cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Master Sergeant Colan is our commander, ma'am. The aliens killed all the officers, except for Lieutenant Goodwin, and he's in sick bay with plasma burns all over him."
"Oh," Wanda said, softly. It wasn't entirely surprising; given what they'd done to the National Guard, but… a ship this size would have had a lot of officers, some of them barely out of college.
Wanda looked at the corporal's white-knuckled grip on his gun -- the gun he was still pointing at them -- and wondered if he'd seen his officers die. If that was why he was so reluctant to lower his weapon. She could remember being this kid's age, traveling through Europe with Pietro and living with the constant fear that someone would recognize them for what they were. It had taken almost a year of living in America before she was comfortable in crowds again, before her first thought when she found herself in the middle of a large group of strangers wasn't how easily they could turn into a mob.
"Seaman Olazaba here says you're Avengers," Master Sergeant Colan began, without preamble. "Which ones are you?"
"I'm Warbird." Carol nodded at Wanda. "She's the Scarlet Witch."
He nodded, apparently thinking that over. "And which one of you ripped the door off its hinges?"
"It was locked," Carol said, not quite defensively. "We're here to ask you for help, Master Sergeant. Those of us who are left are going to fight them, but there aren't enough of us superheroes to do it by ourselves. We need to form a resistance movement, strike back at them. Your men have training, weapons," she nodded at the corporal's gun.
"So you're offering, what, an alliance?"
Wanda nodded. "We have a safe-house in Manhattan. We can offer you accommodations there, with power."
Colan shook his head. "We've got power already, as long as we have enough fuel to keep the engines running. I'm not leaving this ship, and my men aren't leaving it either. They may have slagged our deck guns, but there's still too much sensitive equipment here to let the aliens get their furry paws on it."
"It would be safer-" Wanda began, but Carol cut her off.
"We understand. We're not asking you to abandon your command, but would you still be willing to work with us?"
"Of course we'll work with you," Colan said. "We want those alien bastards gone. He nodded at the corridor behind him. "You better come inside and tell me what you have in mind."
Several minutes later, Wanda and Carol were seated at a long table inside what had once been the ship's briefing room, talking to a motley collection of non-commissioned officers. Colan's decision to stay aboard the destroyer was backed up by the next-highest ranked man, a Navy master chief. Rather than join forces, the destroyer's crew suggested that they function as an autonomous unit, and keep the Avengers informed of their actions via radio contact.
"The more decentralized resistance to the Argonians is, the harder a time they'll have rooting us out," Colan was saying. "They're the ones that have to be tightly organized. We mainly have to be destructive. Between us and the army guys at Fort Hamilton, we've got this side of the river covered. You think you people can handle Manhattan?"
"We're superheroes," Wanda assured him dryly. "We excel at destruction." The question was going to be how much collateral damage they could get away with causing along the way -- there would be little point in driving out the Argonians if they made the city unlivable in the process. They weren't yet at the point of scorched earth tactics.
They might get there, though. Cap seemed to think that they were settling in for a prolonged fight.
Carol was leaning forward, elbows on the table and hands folded in front of her. "One of our biggest weaknesses is transport across the East River. The tunnels are out of the questions, and the bridges are heavily guarded."
"We've got that covered," one of the Navy chiefs said. "There are half a dozen Coast Guard ships trapped inside this thing. The Argonians can't guard the entire river."
"What kind of shape is your communications equipment in?" Carol asked.
"Everything that needs satellite is blocked by that damn shield, but the ship's radio still works."
They listened to Carol, Wanda realized, as the discussion went on. In spite of the fact that she wore neither a costume nor a uniform, she had succeeded in getting them to think of her -- and treat her -- as a fellow soldier, an officer.
The last time she'd seen Carol, the other woman had been falling apart. Had something happened on the West Coast to help her pull herself together again? She hoped so. Watching Carol walk out of the mansion, knowing that she had failed to help her, Wanda had been afraid that she had lost Carol as a friend forever, and worse, that Carol was going to lose herself.
Wanda hadn't been there when Tony had been drinking, but she'd seen the aftermath, and she knew that it had nearly destroyed him. She hadn't wanted to watch that happen to Carol, as well. Wanda had already failed her once, when she had stood by, helpless, and watched Marcus abduct her, and that, too, had nearly destroyed Carol.
It was good to watch Carol be confident and in control. She had already lost Vision -- Hank swore he could and would reassemble him, but he couldn't guarantee that a rebuilt and reprogrammed Vision would still be Vision, with his memories and emotions intact. Wanda had lost him long ago, really, the first time he had been destroyed and rebuilt, and come back with no memory of their relationship, but they had managed to salvage a friendship out of the wreckage of their marriage, and now… if he came back as an emotionless android again, they would lose even that.
She had already lost Vision. She didn't want to lose anyone else.
Carol and Colan were now debating the benefits of conducting their radio communication in an encrypted version Morse code -- on the one hand, it would keep the Argonians from being able to listen in on their communications, but on the other, obviously encoded radio transmissions would draw the Argonians' attention to them.
"Don't forget that they have humans working for them," Wanda pointed out. "They'll be able to find a translator for something as widely known as Morse code, and once they do that, they'll be able to figure out any kind of letter substitution. They have scientists working for them who probably used to do that kind of thing for fun."
"You're right." Colan gave her a grudging nod. "It's not worth the attention it'll draw to us."
"We could have used a book code," a man around Wanda's age muttered from further down the table.
One of the other Navy NCOs shook his head. "Good idea, but it would still draw attention."
And the debate went on, with Wanda's one contribution merely a ripple in the conversation. By the time a simple set of code words had been hammered out, the clock on the far wall was indicating that they'd been there over an hour.
The West Coast Avengers had once come up with a similar code in about fifteen minutes, using nothing but Dr. Who references. Ten minutes, if you subtracted the five minutes Clint and Mockingbird had spent arguing with Hank and Vision over whether Dr. Who was a timeless classic or so bad it was worthy of inclusion on Mystery Science Theater.
Wanda forbore to mention this. The rest of the table already took her less seriously simply by virtue of the fact that she was a civilian; she didn't need to encourage that.
"We'll be in touch," Carol said, as the two of them stood to go. "If you need back up, or change your minds about coming in…"
"We'll let you know." Colan extended his hand to Carol, and then to Wanda. "Olazaba will escort you out." He paused for a second, then added, "And fix the door before you go."
Carol shrugged one shoulder, looking not at all embarrassed. "Sorry about that."
Olazaba led them back out, down the maze of bare metal corridors. The painfully young corporal was still standing guard by the door, rifle in hand.
"I'm, um, sorry I almost shot you, ma'am," he said.
Carol shook her head, her long hair sliding over her shoulders. "It happens. Luckily, I'm mostly bullet proof."
She turned, and picked up the metal door with one hand, lifting it smoothly back into place. The door probably weighed more than Wanda did, yet Carol made the movement look effortless. She used her fist to pound it back into place, then stepped back, eyeing it critically.
"Here." Wanda stepped forward, raising one hand. "Let me." Restoring the hinges to their previous state took less power than attempting to divert attention from their boat, but it was significantly more difficult. Her powers were naturally entropic in nature, and repairing things was always harder than destroying them.
She watched with satisfaction as the residue of chaos power faded and the hinges cooled. It had been a long time since she'd had this level of control. "You have no idea how much I missed being able to do that." She smiled at Carol. "You did a good job in there, by the way. I guess we still make a pretty good team."
Carol snorted. "You don't have to patronize me. I know I was only along because I know how to speak to these guys." She turned on her heel and started for the side of the deck, then stopped and waited for Wanda to catch up to her, her whole body radiating impatience. "Come on," she snapped. "Grab on and let's get out of here."
The trip back across the river was made in dead silence, and somehow, the expanse of water seemed even broader and more strangely desolate than it had just a few hours ago.
no subject
Also, much love for Clint. <3
no subject
And Clint is always deserving of love!
no subject
Loving this story. The plot is excellent, and really well thought out, and the charecterisations are, as always, spot on. It's aso kind of interesting for me seeing as the point of departure from canon is so much further back in time than your more recent stories (or at least that's how it seems to me, it may just be the fact I haven't been around the comic book world for very long.)
no subject
It's especially good to hear that the plot and characterizations are working, because I think this is the most ambitious plot we've tried to do since RR&R, and the most viewpoint characters we've had since then, too.
It's also kind of interesting for me seeing as the point of departure from canon is so much further back in time than your more recent stories
*grins* I know. This is the first non-classic-verse thing we've done that doesn't function on some level as either Civil War denial-fic (New Avengers timeline but no CW, like "The Roughest Day") or fixit-fic for Civil War.
no subject
no subject
no subject
Still loving your plot and all your characters.
Wow, great icon
Re: Wow, great icon
LOL - I have that issue
Hmmm.
Wow, I admire your world building
Bendis and co could learn a thing or two from you two.
Yeah. I admire your world building, because I'm trying to do that myself, and ish is hard.
Re: Wow, I admire your world building
Though I don't know if I should admit that, considering how immature it makes us sound...
no subject
*....and kidnaps Tony*
no subject
I really liked the touch of Otto and Rhino. Maybe it's just from reading that Shocker: Legit story but I've got such a soft spot for Rhino. xD Anyway, yes, I love that you've included villains, too. Because they are part of the earth's populace and alien invaders would not care that they were bad guys. It makes the whole world seem more real.
Clint and Jan's interactions continue to make me smile, oh poor Clint. You've got his conflicting emotions down so well. And yes, I smiled a bit at his surprise at Steve figuring out where they were keeping the scientists. It made sense but yeah, would've seemed totally "how in the?" to anyone who hadn't been reading this story.
OH CAROL. Oh jeez, this is one of those scenes I'd love to see told from the other person's pov just for contrast! I was very eager to see how you how you were going to do the Carol/Wanda bits, I wasn't sure on the dynamic there. But I think I'm seeing it now and klfgadf yay I can't wait for it to bloom. I love characters being ~the best at what they do~ and heee she really shone there :)))
Really enjoyed it, looking forward to the next part as always.
no subject
I'm a Carol fangirl so seeing her anywhere is going to make me happy, and especially with the residual resentment; and I adore Wanda, so seeing her in Non-Psycho! mode (as she seems to so often be portrayed now, both in MU and out) is wonderful (don't know if you've read the most recent Avengers Fairytales- Shulkie in Oz, basically- but 'Wanda''s characterisation in that is great, and sensitive).
As has already been mentioned your care and attention in creating and maintaining the details of your world is fantastic, and your collective writing style is just lovely, and a complete joy.
You made returning from Disneyland Paris far less miserable than it would otherwise have been ;)
no subject
Every new chapter just adds more layers and detail to this world, and I love it. This bit about Octavius:
Tony hadn't seen him move more than a step or so from his position behind his lab bench since then -- he wasn't sure if Octavius even could, dragging the weight of those arms behind him.
..hit me in particular, just because I don't think I'd ever thought about what it would be like for him if the arms were inert.
Then he could lay its components out on the workbench and the floor and arrange them in random patterns. As far as he could tell, that was what some of the engineers and mechanics who'd formerly worked for Stark Industries had done when they were clueless and incompetent and hoping to pretend they weren't.
*laughs* But hey, at least they taught him valuable strategies for how to pretend to get work done without actually doing it! I'm pretty sure Tony would have no idea how not to work if he hadn't had employees to learn from. :-D
He didn't even have secondary and tertiary projects to distract himself with.
It's a good thing Tony isn't actually a cheerful collaborator, because woah, talk about massive productivity and shifting the balance of power. *wry*
Steve was still alive. [snip] but knowing it for sure made something inside his chest unknot.
*hugs Tony*
"Trust me," Tony told him, forcing a smile. "I've done this before."
*hugs Tony more* I have to wonder if Tony will start having nightmares as time grinds on and he's still stuck in there. Talk about a flashback-inducing situation. Things are different in a lot of ways, but that was one of the hardest times of his life...
"Jonah, if you'd like to make editorial changes to the broadcast, maybe you could look over the transcripts before we're on the air?"
*laughs* You gotta love Jameson. *g* I like the radio broadcasts in general, though; it's a very natural feeling way to add breadth (as well as depth) to the story and the universe.
"Good," Clint said. "Because I'm not leaving. The last thing we need is for Tony to succumb to his creepy fascination with Argonian weapons and go rogue."
Ahh, Clint. Worried and a bit of an dick at the same time. We love you so. *g*
Carol is so messed up that it hurts a bit to read her parts, but at the same time I want to see her get better. It's an odd emotional conflict...and kind of makes me sympathize a fair bit with Wanda.
This story (novel, really) amazes me more every time I read it.
no subject
And the radio broadcasts are becoming a highlight for me!
Also, Wanda, Clint, and Carol are all making my day. It feels like the first time I picked up one of the massive Avengers! Assemble compilation monstrosities! Memories~! :D
no subject
I love those compilations :) I think they're what really made me fall for the Avengers as a team, rather than just Steve and Tony as individuals.